mazur@endor.UUCP (03/12/87)
Dear fellow netters!
I just can't believe this. Just paid $99 to upgrade from version 1.05 to
version 3.0 of MS Word, and after two weeks of intensive usage I must
confessed that I am appalled by the behavior of this program...
Here are a couple of features I think shouldn't occur in a $395 piece of
software (some packages at one-tenth the price are just as powerful and
handle some of these better, e.g. SuperPaint):
1) Why the &*%$# does Word 3.0 leave a large number of Temporary files
in the System, and other folders....? From time to time I have to
drag half a dozen of them in the trash...!
2) A terrible problem in version 1.05 has only partially be fixed: leading.
In one used more than one type (or style or size) of font on one line
in the old version, the spacing (leading) between lines [and I mean here
the space between the BASELINES] became irregular. Now one can set the line
spacing to a negative value to 'force' MS Word to retain constant spacing.
Unfortunately this does not work correctly in all cases. It is still
possible to have irregular spacing by changing fonts (in some cases) with
a negative line spacing.
[By the way: even PageMaker suffers from this problem! Only MacWrite 4.5 (!)
seems to be able to handle this fully. Irregular line spacing is totally
*unacceptable* in professional publications. Since papers in science
involve many symbols, as well as many sub- and superscripts, this leads
to results that are not satisfactory for offset publishing].
3) The documentation claims it can even by used for Page Layout, by allowing
text and graphics to be mixed, even on one line. It does indeed allow
that, but , unfortunately again, it doesn't handle PICT graphics as it
should. Try pasting a drawing made in MacDraw into Word, reduce it to
some fraction of its original size (say 30%) and print it on a LaserWriter.
You will notice (yuk!) that it retains the *original line thicknesses*!
[Pagemaker handles this one correctly, although it introduces other
problems] If one reduces or enlarges a drawing, in my humble opinion,
*everything* should scale the same way! It looks real bad as it is now.
Again MacWrite handles this one better.
4) The spelling checker is totally worthless in any scientific writing. It
is not interactive (I have no problem with that, I prefer to check after
wards), but it forces one to go over the text misspelling by misspelling!
If the text involves many mathematical expressions this becomes very
tiring indeed. In addition it is relatively slow, so that one has a tendence
to click the 'next' button a little to quickly, which leads to inadvertent
skipping of real spelling mistakes. Useless.
5) When it prints, indexes or makes a table of contents of multiple linked
documents (nice feature), it insists on opening all of the files (why not
open them sequentially?). With very large documents I guess this might
lead to memory problems [in fact this happened on several occasions with
a prerelease version] But I have to admit that it has worked fine so
far for documents < 60 pages. What makes this feature less useful though
is that one has to set the starting pagenumber *individually* for each
linked document... That is really the kind of thing a computer ought to
do!
6) Here's what triggered this article (thank you for your patience if you
read this far): Try printing a single page document, preferably with some
graphics, and request multiple copies. I'm talking about the LaserWriter.
This unbelievable program treats each copy as an individual job, i.e.
it processes the page, prints it, then processes the page again, and
prints it, then processes the page AGAIN, and prints it. With some
complicated graphics the wait is excruciating! I'm amazed by the patience
of my Macintosh! If you are still able to smile after printing that one
page document, now try requesting 2 (just two) copies of a 60 page
document... Sit back and relax... for a long time. If first prints out
copy 1 of your 60 page document and then starts all over again!Aaarrrgghh!
I'm still using it. It has quite a collection of very nice features. But
unfortunately much more room for urgent improvements than one would hope to
find in software in this price range. Please don't send me mail saying that
I should use this or that processor, or that I should use TeX for mathematical
and scientific processing. I know, I know, I've heard it many times before.
I just wanted to say that I'm amazed to find such obvious and annoying
features/bugs in the release version of 'the most powerful word processing
available for any personal computer' (ipse dixit). The result is unfortunately
not (yet) 'polished, high-quality documents you can be proud of'.
Eric Mazur
_A_R_P_A_-_N_E_T: mazur@harvard.harvard.EDU
_B_I_T_N_E_T: mazur@harvunxh.bitnet
_U_U_C_P: /----- mazur
/ /--- _d_a_s_y!mazur
{seismo,harpo,ihnp4,linus,allegra,ut-sally}!_h_a_r_v_a_r_d! ------
\ \___ _l_a_s_e_x!mazur
\_____ _m_o_l_p_h_y!mazurjww@sdcsvax.UUCP (03/13/87)
I agree, it has many serious problems. I get paragraphs reformatting themselves, with some words going to 14 point and others staying normal. All
the temp files. And more crashes than I can stand.
The spelling checker is only about half done. Has anyone been
able to print in ImageWriter (I) draft mode?
Microsoft is a responsible company, but not always a quick one.
I hope we all see 3.1 Real Soon Now.
--
Joel West
{ucbvax,ihnp4}!sdcsvax!jww (ihnp4!gould9!joel once I fix news)
jww@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu if you mustsu01#@andrew.cmu.edu.UUCP (03/13/87)
One thing you ought to be able to do to cut back on that is to generate a postscript file and then dump that to the laserwriter so it prints multiple copies. I realize that this isn't as nice as printing directly from Word, but it's an idea.... (I wonder what happened... Word 1.05 prints multiple copies with no problem.) --Stuart Uleman (su01@andrew.cmu.edu)